Domesticated
by Lynse
Summary: Maddie the cat doesn't need to understand everything about her human to care about him. (Or: Vlad, as seen by his cat.) One-shot. Written for the 2019 Phic Phight.


A/N: Written for the 2019 Phic Phight and based off a prompt by BlueOatmeal: Vlad's daily life from the perspective of his cat. Standard disclaimers apply.

From day one, she had known that the human who foolishly thought he owned her was not like other humans. True, she couldn't complain about the name he had given her—_Maddie_ surely suited her better than _Fluffy_—and it was not as if she expected him to be able to pick up on the nuances of her true name, but he was different from the others who sometimes came by. His scent was more…distinctive than most.

There wasn't just determination, ingenuity, desperation, obsession, or any other trait or emotion that sprang to the fore and blended back into his unique scent, as it was with other humans. No matter the food he ate, the acrid chemicals he used, or the expensive cologne he wore, he could not mask the underlying smell that raised her hackles and warned of sickness and death. He could not wash it away, either. It never faded, though there were times it grew stronger.

When she'd first arrived, it had been weeks before she'd stopped fleeing from him, stopped hiding the moment she'd sensed his approach. It had been weeks before she'd trusted him enough to stay in the same room, and weeks more before she'd deigned to allow him to touch her.

In the end, she'd decided he was trainable, and he'd deluded himself into thinking the same of her.

She was happy to keep him company during the odd hours he kept, though she had no idea what fascination the light creature held for him. It formed a human shape, but it had no smell, no body. It did not stroke her, did not acknowledge her, did not even seem to see her, despite her numerous attempts to get its attention. Her strange little human also called it Maddie. She supposed his was a simple species, and she could not fault him for getting confused. She already had to do so much for him.

Whenever he went to visit the creature of light, in the Hidden Room of Bad Smells and Slippery Surfaces, she had to remind him of the dangers. Had she not taken it upon herself to block his view whenever possible, he might have fallen for the siren song of Light Maddie, mesmerized by its captivating realm of blinking light squares and the swirling not-wall. If she did not break its spell, he would spend too long staring at the light squares, and occasionally Light Maddie would convince him to summon forth the beings of death—_ghosts_, she remembered—from the not-wall. Worse still, her human sometimes gave himself over to the ghosts.

She could not always suppress her instincts to run when that happened, but she was getting better at being there for him, at reminding him that _this_ was the real world, that his place was among the living, serving her.

She had some success snapping him out of the ghost state by knocking things off shelves, but it was far from reliable. She'd had to clear off an entire countertop of glassware once before he'd finally torn himself from Light Maddie's seductive squares of flashing lights. He had yelled at her, but she'd known it was only Light Maddie's terrible influence, and she'd borne it gravely.

Considering he'd given her an offering of fresh fish soon afterwards, she knew she had done well.

While Light Maddie tried to keep him in its little hidden room, busy with light patterns or funny little tools or, sometimes, creating more creatures that reeked of death, her human would always return to her in the end. If he were ever foolish enough to lock her out of the room and was deaf to her very vocal protests or the way she raked her claws against the sealed doorway, she would wait for his return on the bed she allowed him to share.

The bed was best in the daytime, of course, but she couldn't make her human understand that. He never knew enough to sleep in the warmth of a sunbeam. For a species that barely had any hair, except in the oddest of places, he—like others of his kind—had very little survival instinct. She gave him as much of her coat as she could spare, rubbing on every available surface and sleeping on his false-furs so hers would cling to them and enhance their warmth.

His lip always curled at this—she suspected it was a variation of what all humans did when they were happy—and he would use his death magic to try to return her hair to her. He did not seem to understand that she could not take it back once it was given, and all too often the hair was left on the floor for others to clean up.

Really, he didn't seem to appreciate everything she did for him. She guarded him while he slept, and more than once she'd had to fend off the creatures beneath the blankets. Far though they were from his face, she was not fooled by their tactics; she knew their dangers and reacted accordingly. He would often wake with a cry of pain whenever she was fortunate enough to strike their flesh, and she knew the creatures must have attacked him as they recoiled from her. They had not yet given up. She needed to be vigilant.

Of course, she also had to wake him each day before his sleep became a sleep of death. Dropping things did not always work here, even when she carefully knocked something onto his head—usually one of her toy mice, being easy to transport and hard enough for him to notice when it fell, though she favoured the string of the feathered ball as well. Given the lack of reliability, however, it was often necessary to go right next to his face to check that he was still breathing. On occasion, she would realize that his head was too exposed, too cold, and would grace him with her body heat by curling up on top of him. This proved to be the most effective method for waking him, but he was distinctly ungrateful every time she did so, and he had not yet realized her stony silence in response to his sharp words meant that she did not find it an acceptable way of interacting.

It was a price she had to pay, however. Her intelligence came with patience, and he had already shown that he was willing to learn and adapt to her ways. He'd only had the gall to feed her tasteless, dry kibble once; after she'd regurgitated it over his regular eating spot while he'd been away, he'd learned his lesson. It had been no different when he—or, rather, the ghost to whom he had given the task—had failed to renew her litter box. She required it to be fresh. When it had not been, she'd made a point of relieving herself in his shoes when he'd been away. He had since learned not to leave such imbeciles to care for her needs.

Now, they had fallen into a routine. After she woke him, he would wrap himself in his false-furs and talk to her about his plans. He always had plans. They never seemed to work out, as he never planned for her involvement. She had tried to show him this oversight when they played with the ivory figures on the two-coloured board, swatting at more than her fair share whenever he became overeager, trying to encroach on her territory with his little black figures. He merely laughed, stroking her and calling her little pet names. She always purred to show her pleasure—she must reward his good behaviour—but she resolved to find another way to get this message across to him.

The few times mice had dared to invade her home, she had killed them and brought them to him to show off her prowess. He had acknowledged her skill in that but never sought to expand upon it. Of course, he had also disposed of the mice without feasting on even the choice parts, so she knew he had a lot to learn.

He was getting better, however. He had made a point of presenting her with offerings of food in person in the mornings. If he dallied, enticed by Light Maddie and the temptations of the hidden room, she would increase the frequency and volume of her meows. In this way, he would understand the urgency of the situation, and she was often able to save him from Light Maddie for a little longer.

The detailing of his plans continued at this point—she suspected he thought she may bless them if he appeased her—and, all too often, one of the ghosts interrupted them. Sometimes, her presence was not enough to keep her human grounded in the living world, and he was overtaken by the death state and drawn away. There was nothing she could do for him when it came to this, and it was often when she would sleep. To be fair, he would still leave her even when he was not coerced by Light Maddie or the ghosts, but she knew that very few humans did not face the outside world each day to toil; it was out there that they sought to find and retrieve the offerings they gave to their watchers, and her human was no different in that respect.

Other animals of lesser intelligence—she would never forget the day she had met the horrid ghost dog—may think they had been abandoned, but she knew better. Her human relished her presence too much to leave her. Even if he came to his senses and decided to flee from this place, he would take her with him. It was not that he feared her displeasure; it was that he loved her. She knew that in every stroke, every coo, every murmured bit of praise. She was his Maddie. She allowed him to think of her as a partner, subservient though he truly was, and he recognized the honour she bestowed upon him. She would not sit on just _anyone's_ lap, after all, particularly if they carried with them that peculiar scent of death, decay, and danger.

In his absence, she would do what she could. This involved defending her home from everything from spiders to uninvited ghosts, but most of those ghosts were afraid of her now. The blue box-stealer in particular knew her wrath. Too many times, in his eagerness to abscond with her favourite play box or bed or even litter box, he had not been fast enough to evade her claws, and now a warning hiss was all it took to deter him. (The hiss was especially effective when he could not see her, expertly hidden among the shelves as she could be; she suspected he was the one who had spread the word that she had powers they had not yet uncovered, powers akin to theirs or that exceeded theirs. She approved. Their terror was right and true, and the infernal vulture ghosts have not disturbed her since the whispers began.)

Upon her discovery of the plant ghost, she resolved to test the plants in her home regularly. Her human was unimpressed whenever he caught her nibbling on a fern or three; he acted as though she did not know which plants were deadly and which were not, and as if the threat of the plant ghost was not real. If he would not seal away Light Maddie and close off the not-wall forever, she had to do what she could to preserve the integrity of her home. She did not wish to be caught unawares.

She had been particularly disturbed the day she had come upon her human trying to create _more_ death beings with ties to the living world. She could not ignore the reek of wrongness that permeated her home when the attempts at creation began, and she took her cue from her human. He did not truly care for his creations, so she would not allow them to touch her. She did not want them to get attached—or risk herself getting attached to them. It would be…harder to scorn them if she found herself caring for them. She had made that mistake once, with the girl. She would not do so again. Indeed, she had resolved to destroy her human's experiments whenever he continued attempts to carry them out. They were unnatural and unsafe.

She knew how fond her human was of the other boy like him, and she'd long since decided she could tolerate him. It helped that one of the boy's friends (she had seen them together and recognized the mix of scents) had once attempted to free her human from Light Maddie. Light Maddie had been suitably distracted by visions of the one her human called an oaf, an imbecile, a buffoon, and she had activated that one's programming whenever possible. (It was only a matter of treading across the keys in a particular order, and she had seen the boy's friend enter the sequence; it had not taken much experimentation to reliably replicate it while laying upon the keys or walking in front of the light squares to distract her human and remind him of her presence.) It had served her well until her human had called in another ghost to locate and remove what he believed to be a virus. She had not corrected him, nor had she informed him that further experimentation had allowed her to restore what he'd thought was offending programming.

Truthfully, she had hoped her human's acquiescence to the death state would lessen when he began to more frequently involve the human girl in his work. She did not know of Light Maddie, the not-wall, or the secret room, but she was well aware of the strange objects that came from there, and she had no qualms about using them. The girl smelled too sharply of vengeance for her taste, but her human expressed his pride in the girl and her work, and she had allowed the girl to stroke her. Her touch was warm, strong, and her scent changed to a more honest one when she did so; being granted petting privileges helped the girl in her own struggles, and she one day hoped to extend the same privileges to the boy her human sought to coax into taking up residence with them.

She was unhappy that she saw the boy mostly when he was in a similar death state to her human, but she had seen how he fought to bring her human back from the brink, and that had won him her favour. Besides, he had remarked favourably upon her presence more than once. She suspected he was the reason her human had decided to worship her over others (though why any chose companionship with those dreadful dogs was beyond her; she simply could not understand the minds of some humans). However much the boy smelled of death dog slobber, he could not be beyond redemption.

Her favourite days were those when her human did not come home bleeding or burned, coupled with the rare times when he did not complain loudly about his own minions—be they among the living or the dead. No, she relished the times that he came home and started a fire, allowing her to relish the false sun's warmth. As she waited for him in the gentle heat of the hearth, he would prepare her meal and serve it. She would eat her fill, and then she would take up residence on his lap, gently kneading and then settling down. They would rest together this way, and she could feel him relax as he stroked her or brushed her.

He was too tense, her human. It was getting harder for him to return from the death state each time, and she suspected he had not even noticed. It was why she didn't wish him to continue with it, why she wanted him to end his association with Light Maddie. But she had not discovered a way to return the not-wall to the gaping hole that was its natural state, and the best she could do in the meantime was sabotage his experiments and give him her love.

When he was sufficiently comfortable, she would groom him. He was only as flexible as her in his death state, and she did not want to encourage that. His own tongue looked woefully inadequate for the task, so she would do what she could, even though she'd have to drink soon afterwards to rid herself of the lingering taste of death. (The taste of death was satisfying when the kill was her own, but it was unnerving to taste it on a living human.) He always seemed amused when she moved from licking her paws to licking his leg or, when he began scratching her behind the ears and under the chin, his fingers. She tried to regularly clean his face for him, but he never gave her enough time to do an adequate job. Too often, he would laugh and pull her away, though whether he set her back on his lap and continued doting on her or picked her up to show her another one of his inventions depended on the day.

Still, it was…nice, being with him.

He treated her well.

She was a reason for him to live, to focus on _this_ life, in _this_ world, even if her presence was not yet enough to stop him from returning to the death state.

She hoped he would give it up for her eventually, whether or not any of his plans worked out or his dreams came to fruition. Because they didn't need anyone else; they could get by, just the two of them. She was happy. He could be, too, if he allowed it. She had no doubt about that. He smelled happy, in those rare moments when he forgot to worry and fret, to pine and plan.

He hadn't learned, and she couldn't make him understand, the one thing she knew so well.

The present was precious. It was easy to get lost in the past and forget the future, and it was easy to focus on the future and neglect building any bridges to that future in the present. Neither past nor future should be ignored, but neither should they be favoured over the present.

Her human had fallen into a pattern of sacrificing the present in an attempt to secure the future, but he had told her of his past failures in his certainty of future successes. She knew how many foiled attempts at achieving his dreams lay broken behind him. It was rare that he remembered he was often leaving his happiness behind, swallowed in greed and envy for what he did not have, and that was why she hoped her presence would ground him—and remind him of all he had now.

She would find a way to rescue him from this downward spiral soon enough, before his tenuous grip on reality failed completely and he gave himself over to the death state.

Until then, she would allow him to continue to serve her, to be reminded that he had a place in the living world, and she would enjoy his company as much as he enjoyed hers.


End file.
